“And say,” asked the girl, “did you notice all morning how he didn’t even bat an eye when you spoke to him, if the camera was still turning? Not like a beginner that’ll nearly always look up and get out of the picture.”
“What I bet,” observed Baird, “I bet he’d ‘a’ done that album stuff even better than he did if I’d actually put his own pictures in, the way I’m going to for the close-ups. I was afraid he’d see it was kidding if I did, or if I told him what pictures they were going to be. But I’m darned now if I don’t think he’d have stood for it. I don’t believe you’ll ever be able to peeve that boy by telling him he’s good.”
The girl glanced up defensively as they walked.
“Now don’t get the idea he’s conceited, because he ain’t. Not one bit.”
“How do you know he ain’t?”
She considered this, then explained brightly, “Because I wouldn’t like
him if he was. No, no—now you listen here” as Baird had grinned. “This
lad believes in himself, that’s all. That’s different from conceit.
You can believe a whole lot in yourself, and still be as modest as a
new—hatched chicken. That’s what he reminds me of, too.”
The following morning Baird halted him outside the set on which he
would work that day. Again he had been made up by the Montague girl,
with especial attention to the eyebrows so that they might show the
Parmalee lift.
“I just want to give you the general dope of the piece before you go on,” said Baird, in the shelter of high canvas backing. “You’re the only son of a widowed mother and both you and she are toiling to pay off the mortgage on the little home. You’re the cashier of this business establishment, and in love with the proprietor’s daughter, only she’s a society girl and kind of looks down on you at first. Then, there’s her brother, the proprietor’s only son. He’s the clerk in this place. He doesn’t want to work, but his father has made him learn the business, see? He’s kind of a no-good; dissipated; wears flashy clothes and plays the races and shoots craps and drinks. You try to reform him because he’s idolized by his sister that you’re in love with.
“But you can’t do a thing with him. He keeps on and gets in with a rough crowd, and finally he steals a lot of money out of the safe, and just when they are about to discover that he’s the thief you see it would break his sister’s heart so you take the crime on your own shoulders. After that, just before you’re going to be arrested, you make a getaway—because, after all, you’re not guilty—and you go out West to start all over again—”
“Out there in the big open spaces?” suggested Merton, who had listened attentively.
“Exactly,” assented Baird, with one of those nervous spasms that would now and again twitch his lips and chin. “Out there in the big open spaces where men are men—that’s the idea. And you build up a little gray home in the West for yourself and your poor old mother who never lost faith in you. There’ll be a lot of good Western stuff in this—Buck Benson stuff, you know, that you can do so well—and the girl will get out there some way and tell you that her brother finally confessed his crime, and everything’ll be Jake, see what I mean?”